Burden Of Grief - Unchained

Burden Of Grief

Unchained

by Aaron "Five Magics" Price at 05 August 2014, 6:41 PM

After 20 years, and now 6 full length albums BURDEN OF GREIF and Massacre Records are pushing their way back into the middle of the pit with some heavy Melodic Death Metal. Spanning 9 songs, 2 bonus tracks, and 40+ minutes of heavy solid riffs, vocals growing stronger song by song, drums that destroy these little fills and everything else, and not to surprisingly bass that you can unfortunately barely hear, BURDEN OF GRIEF are ready to headbutt you right in the ear with Metal.

The album has different paces and heavy riffs but before we get to that lets talk about this soft intro. "Awaken the Nightmare" starts off with a pretty clean guitar riff that's played a few times, then a true Death Metal riff begins and the song starts to kick into high gear pulling you into the album. "Unchained" has one of the best riffs in this album. The way the guitars harmonize and go together really make you understand why this is Melodic Death Metal, the drums are always crushing doing whatever they're doing. To be honest, this song reminds me a lot of SHADOWS FALL, if you were curious about who this band may sound like. Skipping ahead a lot so im not repeating myself about killer riffs and melodies and stuff for the rest of the songs the final song normally on the album is "Black Evolution 666" which is a strong closer, once again this only closes the album if you don't have the bonus tracks, with a very VADER sounding song BURDEN OF GRIEF close out a very heavy Melodic Death Metal album on a high note. If you have the bonus tracks welcome to something else, our true album closer is "Neon Knights" and yes, this is the song you think it is. I love my covers, covers are great it's awesome to hear some band you like cover another band you like. AVENGED SEVENFOLD covering PANTERA, BATTLECROSS covering SLAYER, or maybe KORN covering PINK FLOYD is more relatable here. Nothing changes about how they preform, so figure out how would Ronnie James Dio's BLACK SABBATH sound as Death Metal? The answer isn't to good. It was an interesting idea but Dio always has to be Dio, you can't change what he did to Death Metal, its blasphemous.

To close off, happy 20th anniversary to BURDEN OF GRIEF, that's a ton of long years, music written and tour dates. With "Unchained" a great Melodic Death Metal album outside of "Neon Knights" and another big hit for Massacre Records hopefully we can all see these guys out on the road soon!